What is to be undone?

The repeal of Obamacare is the organizing principle around which we must rally to put us on a path toward the restoration of limited government. David Hogberg usefully itemizes 20 ways Obamacare will take away our freedoms. We seek to rescue limited constitutional government from the maws of national socialism into which Obama and Obama’s Democrats have inserted us.
The difficulty with repeal is practical. Repeal would require Republican congressional majorities as well as a Republican president. It may even require a Republican supermajority for the repeal of some elements of Obamacare in the Senate. By the time Democrats are done ramming Obamacare through Congress, however, they may have provided the means to reverse engineer repeal with a simple majority.
The most promising development by far over the past year has been the visible emergence of the spirit of liberty among ordinary citizens. It is the spirit of liberty that is the seedbed of resistance to Obama and his works. We must take heart from the fact that so many of our fellow citizens came to oppose Obamacare despite the big lies on which it is founded.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin has a handy guide to the real arithmetic of Obamacare; Alan Reynolds has more here. The pitiful performance of the mainstream media did not entirely prevent the American people from understanding the mess of pottage they were offered in exchange for their birthright.
The Republican Party is the natural instrument of opposition and therefore the needed organ for the repeal of Obamacare. Its leaders have acquitted themselves admirably in opposing Obamacare. It is a means to be used as long as it returns to its principles.
Dedicating ourselves to the repeal of Obamacare means dedicating ourselves to the defeat of Democrats at every level of government, but especially at the state and federal level. As Hugh Hewitt points out, the 34 Democrats who voted against Obamacare must be held accountable for their votes for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House and their other votes in favor of the program of national socialism on which Obama is embarked.
Take, for example, Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota. The good people of South Dakota must understand that her vote against Obamacare is meaningless so long as she contributes to the Democrats’ will to power in Washington. She should be defeated in favor of a Republican candidate who will help constitute a partisan majority for the undoing of Obamacare.
And prolife Democrats must be shorn of the illusion that a Democrat in office is anything but a Democrat regardless of the adjective he chooses to place as a prefix to his party. They should be invited to make common cause with Republicans in the next election and for the foreseeable future.
The otherwise useless Bart Stupak may have his uses after all. He provides the living proof that you’re in trouble when you have to count on a prolife Democrat to mean what he says, or have to rely on him to stand on principle to oppose a horrendous piece of legislation.
UPDATE: While I was working on this post, Bill Kristol posted a special editorial along the same lines: “Repeal is the heart of the matter. It should be the heart of the message.” See also Paul Rahe’s excellent “Hope and change: Had enough?” Professor Rahe supplies the historical context of our political challenge.